This quotation has often been attributed to Adolf Hitler, along with the words: “This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration!”

Variations of these statements have been repeated countless times on internet forums and even printed on T-shirts and car bumper stickers.

But there is no evidence that the Nazi leader ever really said either of these things.

The only properly-sourced Hitler statement on gun control we can find is this: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.”

The context is important here. Hitler was specifically talking here about how the Nazis would subdue the population in the parts of Russia and eastern Europe they had just conquered.

That’s not generally what gun lobbyists have in mind when they talk about Nazi Germany.

The usual argument is that Hitler introduced gun control to tighten his grip over the civilian population of Germany and allow him to commit the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Wayne La Pierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, put it like this: “The German police state tactics left its citizens, especially Jews, defenseless against tyranny and the wanton slaughter of a whole segment of its population.”

The truth is more complicated. The Nazis did enact a gun law, but only in 1938, five years after they were voted into power.

By that time Hitler was firmly in control of most arms of the German state. Gun legislation had clearly paid a negligible part in the process of consolidating power.

And the Nazi laws actually weakened existing gun controls for most civilians. The 1938 statute superseded a law passed 10 years earlier by the Weimar government (readers of German can look at the original documents here).

The new law lowered the minimum age of gun ownership from 20 to 18, relaxed the rules on who needed a permit to own weapons and applied only to handguns, effectively removing existing restrictions on rifles, shotguns and ammunition.

Jews were expressly banned from owning weapons and there were reports of police disarming Jews shortly before Kristallnacht, a wave of attacks on Jewish homes and businesses in November 1938.

So it is possible to argue that the Nazis pursued a policy of disarming the Jewish population as a precursor to mounting attacks on Jews.

Whether that means that the crimes of the Holocaust would not have happened if more Jewish citizens had been armed is highly debatable. Like all questions of hypothetical history, it’s impossible to answer.

Researchers called 4,977 American households at random and asked people whether they had used a gun to defend themselves against a criminal in the last year.

Just over 1 per cent of the anonymous respondents said yes. Extrapolate that percentage to cover the whole population of the United States (about 250 million in 1993) and you get up to 2.5 million uses of guns in self-defence a year.

Divide the number of seconds in a year by 2.5 million and you get a gun drawn in self-defence every 13 seconds.

Clearly the numbers generated by this survey are massive – perhaps absurdly so.

About 15 per cent of people who claimed to have used a gun said that they had actually pulled the trigger, and more than half of those who fired said they wounded or killed the attacker. That’s a much higher hit rate than trained firearms officers manage.

Professor David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health points out that the the study suggests Americans used guns in self-defence in 845,000 burglaries in 1993. But only 1.3 million people reported being burgled while at home in that year and two thirds said they were asleep at the time.

Telephone surveys like this are a perfectly reasonable research method but extrapolating the results to the whole country throws up big problems.

If only half of those 1 per cent of those 5,000 people are lying or mistaken about having a gun encounter, the estimated number of encounters will be twice as high as it should be.

And we have to believe that the respondents are telling the truth. If this really is a random survey a small percentage of people might be mentally ill, or drunk when they pick up the phone, or a member of the National Rifle Association with a point to prove.

Prof Hemenway quotes another US telephone survey, carried out in 1994, in which 6 per cent of people said that they had personally been in contact with aliens from another planet.

Extrapolating from that suggest that an American has an alien encounter every two seconds. One for the bumper stickers, perhaps.

The one thing we can say for sure is that the bit about “saving lives” every 13 seconds is nonsense, on any view.

Only in 30 per cent of the incidents recorded in the survey did the respondent feel that someone would “probably” or “almost certainly” have died if a gun had not been used.

In nearly half the stories, the person on the phone admitted that the “offender” didn’t actually make a threat or attack, and in 57 per cent of cases, the “defender” just mentioned that they had a gun and didn’t even draw a weapon.

“More gun control, fewer shootings?”

Not necessarily. It’s possible to find correlations between high rates of gun use and high rates of gun murders, as you might expect.

But that doesn’t mean the statistical patterns always follow obvious trends. Opponents of gun control point out that gun violence in the US is going down even as ownership rates go up.

And in Britain, tighter firearm laws brought in after the Dunblane massacre did not lead to a falling-off of gun crime.

The basic problem is that correlation doesn’t prove causation.

You could find US states where gun deaths have gone up or down after tighter legislation was introduced, but it’s impossible to filter out all the other factors that might have affected the crime rate.

The biggest academic reviews of the evidence in America have all concluded that we can’t say one way or the other whether gun control laws will necessarily lead to a drop in killings.

More from Channel 4 FactCheck

37 reader comments

Charles James Jaggerssays:

There are a lot of lies spread on both sides. Sensible gun control would be ok for America I think.It will take a long time to reduce all the gun crime murders.Too many tv shows show bad guys being shot dead as the only solution. It is understandable that unstable people without personal power see shooting as the answer to their problems.

If you want to stop resistance you stop people organising. The other quote is about guns in the USSR, gun permits were actually easy to get hold of and the Red Army lost all sorts of weapons like guns.
Part of the 2nd amendment mentions a well ordered militia now if these were organised with proper secure arsenals and training, overseen by saying courts ensuring they were well ordered, then they might have a valid point in defending against tyrants but uncoordinated gun ownership will not do that and the people who wrote the 2nd amendment knew that which is why they mention well ordered militia, the NRA is a bunch of red necks funded by the gun makers. The NRA shows that what you need to defend something is organisation not an arbitrary collection of tools.

Its just unbelievabal what some families have in their house in the way fo guns in the U S. O K you are going to arm teachers with pistols but that’s not going to stop somebody coming into a school with an AK47 which can outgun with ease a pistol. The gun lobby in the U S seem to act as though they are sons of John Wayne.

The idea that the Nazis disarming German Jews had some connection witht the Holocaust is too stupid to be worth arguing with. For a start, bear in mind that something like 95% of the deaths in the Holocaust were Jews in conquered nations. As for the Jews of Germany (and Austria), the deportations to the death camps were just the final step in a long series of official and unofficial attacks, each backed up by the threat of ruthless and disproportionate force. There was no identifiable moment at which collective resistance seemed warranted – or not until it was too late to try it – and individual or small-scale resistance would simply have been crushed. The idea that Second Amendment would have saved the Jews really is an idiotic fantasy.

Seriously? Can you please talk about the cases where supreme court has decided the state has no obligation to protect a person? Tell that to the sikhs that were recently shot up in a temple. If any of them had an AR15 with training(something you brain numb nuts seem not keen to spend money on) that guy would have been DEAD. It’s ridiculous that brain dead people all over the world are bent on robbing America of its free world status.

People aren’t trying to “rob [us] ” of our free world status: there are merely asking valid questions about whether gun control would reduce gun crime.

Dismissing it out of hand isn’t sensible. I don’t personally feel that areming every one would work either. Logic would suggest that fewer guns mean fewer gun crimes as their are fewer people with the means: but as fact checker points out, this dones’t necessarily hold true.

My question is this: without trialing this solution, how can we ever know? I know you won’t disagree that saving childrens lives is worth trying.

As for putting !armed guards” in schools: this is an horrifi idea. As a teacher, i can say that the idea of arming people in schools is truely terrifying.

i would also like to know how these individuals get into school buildings? UK schools have secure entrances: all visitors have to be passed through a reception area with a sealed door / gate, meaning the intruder would struggle to gain access to the students. All staff must wear name badges and challeneg any unescorted,unfamiliar adult in school without a visitor pass.

Rgarding the court cases – Channel four, please tell us more about these, I’m in a state of shock. i thought the American police motto was “protect and serve” not “look like I’ve tried to protect, and serve people related to me”

Ask a father in an African village whether there should be more guns in his child’s school and he’d think you’re mad. In the US it seems to be a serious point for discussion. They look like us, they sound like us, they’re nothing like us.

Well after seeing Larry Pratt interview on your show tonight someone needs to wring his neck and make him wake up and live in the 21st century not still in living in 1781 by mentioning how the British would not have been defeated if the Americans were not armed, what a ridiculous scenario to mention to have an opinion on gun control in America today and what has been happening due to bad gun control in the US, until America votes to rid of people like Larry Pratt who I can only say is a Pratt, of the Gun Ownership of America, I am afraid to say America will not change and others in the world will not respect anything the gun lobby says. its shame the kids growing up in America have no future while the republicans are in the pockets of the gun lobbyists and have vermin on their hands: the gun lobbyists.

It isn’t even true to say that the guns Americans kept at home is what defeated the British what defeated amongst other things was that the proto US government organised armies, trained soldiers and bought guns for them. The private indvduals home weapons would not have been of much use.

Totally agree, I saw it too and thought the guy dangerously nuts. Which only makes it more worrying that he’s the kind of person that keeps an arsenal of weapons in his home. Not only was he living in the distant past he also based his argument not on what Pres Obama is actually proposing but on his own assumption of that leading to the removal of the 2nd amendment. Least that’s what he said when he wasn’t threatening the president. Needs locking up.

When UK banned handguns a politician (Alun Michael I think??) said they had taken handguns off the streets. The guns that were banned were never on the streets: they were used for sporting purposes by law abiding citizens. What did our handgun ban do to stop Dale Cregan (may not be spelt like that?) gunning down two WPCs?
Until we can “uninvent” guns they will be available for criminals and psychopaths. Controls and bans are not only worthless, they are counterproductive. My 3 handguns were taken by the government. To replace them I “upgraded” to 4 (yes four!) high powered rifles, plus one low power (.22 calibre) together with a self loading shotgun and a pump action. I am a sane and law abiding citizen – there is no reason why I shouldn’t have guns.

Laurie says that “there is no reason why I shouldn’t have guns” Laurie owns guns, these guns (I assume he is a lawful UK gun owner) are registered and stored safely. His licence to own them is only given once his background has been checked and is regularly reviewed. Each firearm is registered with the police.

The UK laws help prevent the kind of epidemic of gun violence that the US is having.

Anyone can buy a firearm privately in the US with no background check, no licence, no registration and no traceability.

The NRA and gun lobbyist resist any registration and even background checks.

40% of firearms purchases in the US have no checks.

70% of all murders in the US involve a firearm. This perecentage is rising as the general murder rate falls.

US Gun deaths will overtake death by car in the next 2 years.

The fallback argument of the gun lobby is that the citizens right to bear arms is the final protection against a tyrannical government. “American Patriot” bloggers discuss how to resist federal agents if a law was passed banning any kid of firearm and confiscation was ordered. Advice on petrol bombs and organising local groups is common. The comments…

We live in a society nowadays where people want to be told what to do complete loss of individualism and respect for freedom, the price you will pay is tyranny, you think the government is going to let the upcoming economic collapse go to waste? No they will use it to enslave yoy further and take what little freedoms you have left.

How will having a gun stop me being ‘enslaved’ by them (who ever they are)? I suppose I could take a few pot shots at ‘their’ police and once I have been shot dead myself there isn’t much chance of me being enslaved anymore.
Why do all the reactionaries think guns are the saviour of society – the reality is that unregulated capitalists enslave the population economically these days. Funnily enough it seems to be the same people who argue hard for no restrictions on guns who follow the politics of unadulterated capitalism. No doubt so they have an arsenal with which to kill any of the ‘enslaved’ who dare to burgle their mansions.

US has high gun crime due to poor economic/social issues, a lot of young people in urban areas have little choice but to go into gangs.

Look at other places with high gun availability, gun crime is low as they don’t suffer from the same economic/social issues.

But the establishment doesn’t care about this, it’s just an excuse for them, they want to disarm you because they see you as a threat to their power structure and like all dictatorships, they disarm the people they want to screw with.

Regarding the constitution: Freedom of Speech does not allow crying “Fire” in a crowded theatre; “Freedom of the Press” does not allow child pornography – even if computer generated, not involving actual children. “Freedom of Assembly” is modified all the time by fire and safety considerations. “Freedom of religion” does not allow polygamy.

The next time someone interviews a gun lobby spokesperson, they should point this out.

It was interesting to hear that a vote for the abolition of high magazine assault weapons would if passed probably be changed in committee to encompass more weapons .No wonder the Republicans have refused to pass such an ammendment. As a former teacher I would be learning to shoot if I was in the USA.

However it is nothing less than barbaric that such weapons are able to be in the hands of ordinary citizens.When manipulation by political parties interferes with the normal course of action for the security of citizens there needs to be serious thought. Why not a straight yes /no vote on the banning of certain categories of weapons by all citizens in a referendum.High magazine assault weapons as a beginning to prevent such appalling tragedies.

Thankfully most of the comments here are sensibly in favour of tighter gun control. One argument which I never hear countered is the ridiculous one put by the Pratt and his red-neck NRA morons that Obama better not touch the second amendment as this would be unconstitutional and they threaten retaliation. I’m no constitutional lawyer, but this is plain stupid: a constitution can and needs to be amended – otherwise clearly there wouldn’t have been a second amendment. So Obama would be acting entirely constitutional to amend the second amendment just as it was to create it in the first place! It’s these bullies and fools threatening unspecific actions who are unconstitutional. Furthermore the whole argument that the right to bear arms is to defend against tyrannical government is nonsense: clearly they don’t have much faith in their ‘oh so super democracy’ with its ‘balance of powers’ and ‘checks and balances’ written into their so sacrosanct constitution if they actually can’t trust it to protect them against tyrants without the need for guns. Please no more trumpeting they are the greatest democracy in the world until they start acting like it.

“There’s no such thing as a good gun. There’s no such thing as a bad gun. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a very dangerous thing. A gun in the hands of a good person is no danger to anyone except the bad guys.” -Charlton Heston
Remember Good guys out number bad guys, but don’t give the bad guys the edge by taking guns away from good people. Bad people will find a way to exploit that!
I am a simple man with simple ideas! That Work for me!
There is no doubt the constitution gives us the right to bear arms. What arms meant at that time was what was available at the time. The intent was to stop government from oppressing its people and people to remain the leaders of its government. We all know power corrupts and total power corrupts totally. We see that in our government and police forces and unfortunity in Congress. Government wants us to rely on them for our protection yet we are being robed blind by them. They don’t play by the rules we have to play by. Today’s government corruption and economic climate are such that people cannot allow their guns to be taken away. Beware! That is from a peace loving, God fearing Christian man that would not hurt…

While the initial statement of your argument is difficult to counter (ie A gun in the hands of a bad man is a very dangerous thing. A gun in the hands of a good person is no danger to anyone except the bad guys), I think the rest of your argument falls flat. A gun in the hands of a good man can be taken from the good man and land in the hands of a bad man. That’s the case whether its taken off him (or her) during an attack, or just stolen so easily when they are left around the house, or in car glove compartments, or women’s purses and men’s jackets… So clearly a gun cannot be guaranteed to stay with a good man as its all too easy for it to be taken by a bad man – or someone with mental disorders. That’s quite apart from the fact that guns are traded so easily with no real checks whether the buyer is a good man or not. So no, it doesn’t work for me, or anyone with any real sense of what’s right and wrong, good and bad. If I were you, I’d try to find a greater philosopher that Heston for your ideas.

Similarly your line that the original intention of the second amendment was to protect its citizenry from undemocratic, corrupt and tyrannical government is correct…

Similarly your line that the original intention of the second amendment was to protect its citizenry from undemocratic, corrupt and tyrannical government is correct. You are also right there is much corruption and bending of rules by those in power. But once again I have to say it doesn’t sound very democratic to suggest just because you don’t agree with the government it should be overthrown by force, which is what you are in effect saying: ‘this far and no further otherwise there will be an uprising.’ Funny that approach to democracy is similar to those of communists who also don’t like it when democracy doesn’t go their way. I’m sure Pratt and his fellow rednecks would be shocked at just how much they are alike to that other scourge of the modern world: the red soviets.

The difference between Communists and Libertarians is the former feel self-entitled to other peoples stuff and the latter just want to be left alone. Communist (or government) is the burgular, Libertarian is the house keeper.

Can’t agree more – I’m very much a liberal/libertarian (though of course liberal means something entirely different in the States…). But what many liberals/libertarians don’t seem to realise is that hand in hand with rights go responsibilities. Responsibilities in observing democracy and the constitution and not threatening all sorts of measures if anyone dares take away their beloved guns, in realising that in a civilised society, guns should be held only by the responsible law enforcement agencies (or as your response suggests, is American society still stuck in an uncivilised, outdated Wild West mentality where everyone has the ‘supposed’ right to act as policeman, judge, jury and executioner?)

Guns are not the protector of liberty – good governance, civic responsibility, a well written constitution and a working respected democracy are all far better protectors of liberty. All of which the US can and does aspire to. However guns the way many Americans think of them as the protector of liberty is in fact a fallacy. The reverse is clearly true. In reality the second amendment is short-hand for an uncivilised free-for-all anarchy where those with guns such as the…

The reverse is clearly true. In reality the second amendment is short-hand for an uncivilised free-for-all anarchy where those with guns such as the NFA can bully and terrorise those without into submission. Its time this trend was reversed.

Going from what you’ve said you’re definitely not a libertarian, you’re for prohibition and you speak of “responsibilities” like a socialist. You also talk like the state and the people are two different things (in a disarmed society, they are two different things), in a free society the government is representative of the people.

You sound like a social(ist) totalitarian.

“In reality the second amendment is short-hand for an uncivilised free-for-all anarchy”

Oh like in 1776 when Americans used guns to free themselves from tyranny?

You couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m sorry if you can’t see the difference and don’t appreciate that you can’t pursue your rights completely unfettered, with no thought on the way your rights may impact and interfere with someone else’s equally valid rights.

I guess you are American: many Americans can’t seem to get the subtle idea of rights and responsibilities without immediately knee-jerking to the usual jibe of you’re a communist/socialist. Yes lets all return to the law of the jungle, might equals right and then you’ll be totally happy with your sovereign rights, unconstrained by any responsibilities.

It was of course mainly the militia who quite rightly fought for American freedom against the British tyranny, difficult as it is to say that as I am a Brit. But to repeat myself, the world has moved on and perhaps the US needs to realise the war of independence was over 200 years ago and you are no longer fighting a tyranny or living in the Wild West.

I despair of Americans and gun control So why not look at If a gun is sold without a background check, and a crime is committed within thirty days of the purchase, make the seller of the gun responsible for civil court damages? If you can sue a ladder maker when you fall off a ladder (and was done three or four years ago in the US) why not make gun dealers responsible for the use of the weapons?

I despair of the mentality on display. No I’m not a socialist, or a communist or a totalitarian-ist, or a fascist or any other ‘ist or ‘ism’ other than a libertarian-ist and a democrat (ie not a US Democrat, just a passionate believer in democracy).

I am not blurring rights with needs – and clearly your argument is shot through with illogicality and inconsistency. So what you are saying is my ‘rights’ are only ‘needs’ which you are at liberty to discard and trample over? Well we can all play that game: your ‘rights’ become just as easy to dismiss as mere ‘needs’ and not rights.

But I don’t play that game, I’m not so blindly selfish or inconsiderate of other people. That’s clear from your view that other people’s rights – presumably the weaker people’s rights – can be dismissed through Darwinian natural selection. Not my view of life, or I would have thought a God-fearing American either.

The final statement about King George and the current administration being equally bad is below contempt. There’s probably an underlying reason for this view I’ll skirt over, but once again it shows how in some quarters democracy is wafer thin in that great…

The final statement about King George and the current administration being equally bad is below contempt. There’s probably an underlying reason for this view I’ll skirt over, but once again it shows how in some quarters democracy is wafer thin in that great democracy we always hear about. Too many Americans seem to think democracy is fine when “I win” but “woe betide if I don’t”. Well, I’m sorry to inform you, that’s not how democracy works. Perhaps you aren’t a believer in democracy after all and just want your own form of dictatorship.

There’s not a lot I disagree with there, save perhaps the odd example which doesn’t seem to follow. (ie people are still free to provide healthcare whether its via the state or the market and so its not an infringement of anyone’s rights to provide it… certainly the UK example of state and private healthcare illustrates this is possible).

Not sure where this discussion goes as clearly there’s some common ground even if views on gun control seem stubbornly fixed. I’m sure Bob and others haven’t changed their views – and neither have mine. Owning a gun for self-defence is unnecessary and wrong. The ultimate crazed logic is we should all have our own atom bombs.

As long as they aren’t forcing anyone to provide/fund it (taxes) then that’s technically ok, but questionable from a free-market point of view.

It’s basically the same service but with a few improvements, like getting a fast pass at a theme park and since you are still technically within the same system you still have the issue of GP’s not cooperating where in the US you could just go straight for the treatment you wanted.